I’m waiting for the cast of characters to be announced. The Portuguese and Coastal African tribes for raiding the interior and capturing the slaves. The Dutch, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Danes, and British for buying and transporting them to the Americas (primarily Brazil) and the Spanish, French, Portuguese, and British for buying them.
I figure if everyone kicks in their share we got this thing licked.
You forgot the Arab slave traders and the African blacks themselves who happily captured and sold members of opposing or weaker tribes into slavery.
It’s what humans did for thousands of years… and still do. All over the Gulf States.
And don’t forget “indentured servitude..”. Plenty of poor Irish, Scots and Brits ended up that way.
And while we are at it, giving POW’s to families to work was a thing all through WW2 right here in America.
Well, on the Bruce park, I have no issue with this decision or settlement. Their land was wrongly taken using the legal means of eminent domain. BUT… the seizure was not so the city could improve the property or build a railway or something for the public good. It was to deprive a black family of land and there is paperwork to prove it. Eminent domain was wrongly used. It got resolved, albeit late, in courts. And the family sold its property back. That’s not reparations. That is a clear cut case of restitution of property that was wrongly seized by misuse of a statute.
So shall we play a game?
Under those same guidelines, how many Southern families should get the descendants of their property returned to them to sell or put back to work? The single largest asset, by dollar value, in the Antebellum South was slaves. Land was almost worthless. There was more than anyone knew what to do with. And without the labor to improve it… it was almost worthless.
So the value in the south was labor. And the land/crops/industries in the South were not profitable under a wage structure. So slaves were “the” most important asset if the southern colonies (and later states) were to thrive or even survive.
But in c. 1863, Those assets were snatched from the property-owning families by executive fiat and only years AFTER the property was taken did the state (aka federal government) create the legal framework for doing so with Legislation and, later, Constitutional Amendments. And the removal of slaves from their owners was clearly and documentably racially and politically motivated.
The removal was in the tens of billions… maybe trillions.. in todays dollars.
Now some, like Benjamin Butler, argued that slaves were spoils of war or that the Confederates, being conquered were subject to the whims of the USG. But Southern property owners didn’t forfeit their land. Or their barns. Or their tools. Or their businesses. Or their animals (well Sherman’s
Men ate and burned a lot of property… but that was just war damage…). So when it came to seizure, it was Just their slaves… so the seizure of property was selective and racially motivated.
Ok, but slaves are human beings. Not tools or animals. So argued the abolitionists. But that was not the law at the time. In fact the law at the time was that they were property and only counted as 3/5ths of a person in order that the Southern Congressional Districts were allowed more power in congress… in order to entice Southern States to ratify the Constitution. Essentially gave each Southern voter more power than a Northern voter in the House. But slaves and indentured servants were not people. Only northern abolitionists who “felt” like they were people were arguing the difference between land, machines, animals and slaves. Because… feelings.
So going back far enough… isn’t there a case for reparations to families who were deprived of legally-owned property by a government that made decisions based on skin color… and deprived these citizens, selectively, of their property? (Oh and don’t argue that Confederates were no longer citizens… because USG never recognized their sovereignty or the confederacy. Southerners were American Citizens throughout the war according to the government that deprived them of their property).
Arguments can work both ways. And the argument for restitution (aka Bruce Park) is much stronger than the one for reparations.
Weird, huh? And convoluted! But it gets better!!!
Especially when the initial “wrong” was committed on another continent (the actual enslavement.). After that, it was a series of legal transactions for a legal product, supported and documented by paperwork and national/state/local laws. The depravation of property by an activist, racially-motivated Federal government sounds like the definition of being wrongly stripped and deprived of property, does it not?
Thus… don’t The reparations need to come from the Europeans, Africans and the Arabs who committed the original act — depriving Africans of their freedom. Where is their paperwork and legal framework? Law of the Jungle doesn’t count in US courts. Bills of sale do.
Love to have some actual legal scholars weigh in on this. Would make a good law school debate… when you take the huggie-feelie—snowflake dogma out of the discussion.
Reparations might prove profitable to old Southern families and heirs deprived wrongly of their property. With $5 million check, lots of folks could get that Camaro off of cinder blocks and the ‘fridge off their porch.
Sadly, my family was in New Hampshire making a good living selling whiskey and Hors d’ouvres to the Indians. So I get nothing and have to leave my Camaro on cinder blocks for another year.
Sirhr
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